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Cited by 19Health Literacy and Information AccessibilityMobile Health and mHealth ApplicationsText Readability and Simplification

A Smart Mobile App to Simplify Medical Documents and Improve Health Literacy: System Design and Feasibility Validation

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Hendawi, Rasha, Alian, Shadi, Li, Juan·2022·JMIR Formative Research
DOI 10.2196/35069PMC PMC9015750

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Abstract

BACKGROUND: People with low health literacy experience more challenges in understanding instructions given by their health providers, following prescriptions, and understanding their health care system sufficiently to obtain the maximum benefits. People with insufficient health literacy have high risk of making medical mistakes, more chances of experiencing adverse drug effects, and inferior control of chronic diseases. OBJECTIVE: This study aims to design, develop, and evaluate a mobile health app, MediReader, to help individuals better understand complex medical materials and improve their health literacy. METHODS: MediReader is designed and implemented through several steps, which are as follows: measure and understand an individual's health literacy level; identify medical terminologies that the individual may not understand based on their health literacy; annotate and interpret the identified medical terminologies tailored to the individual's reading skill levels, with meanings defined in the appropriate external knowledge sources; evaluate MediReader using task-based user study and satisfaction surveys. RESULTS: On the basis of the comparison with a control group, user study results demonstrate that MediReader can improve users' understanding of medical documents. This improvement is particularly significant for users with low health literacy levels. The satisfaction survey showed that users are satisfied with the tool in general. CONCLUSIONS: MediReader provides an easy-to-use interface for users to read and understand medical documents. It can effectively identify medical terms that a user may not understand, and then, annotate and interpret them with appropriate meanings using languages that the user can understand. Experimental results demonstrate the feasibility of using this tool to improve an individual's understanding of medical materials.

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  • Animation, text or social media promotion, or apps help patients acquire health information more effectively.

    “For example, animation [357,358], text or social media promotion [359,360,361], or apps [362,363] help patients acquire health information more effectively [364].”

    From Toward Safer Diagnoses: A SEIPS-Based Narrative Review of Diagnostic Errors (2026) · cites this paper as [363]

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References 34 · Cited by 19

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Authors
Hendawi, R., Alian, S., & Li, J.
Affiliations
North Dakota State University (US)
Corresponding author
Li, Juan
ORCID
Venue
JMIR Formative Research
Publisher
JMIR Publications Inc.
Published
2022-04-01
Volume
6
Issue
4
Pages
e35069
ISSN
2561-326X (ISSN-L)
DOI
10.2196/35069
PMC
PMC9015750
OpenAlex
W4224288542
Cited by
19
References
34
Citations by year
2026: 5 · 2025: 3 · 2024: 3 · 2023: 5 · 2022: 3
FWCI
4.02
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
cc-by
Locations
  • JMIR Formative Research (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion)
Funders
  • National Science Foundation (1722913)
  • Division of Information and Intelligent Systems (1722913)
Topics
  • Health Sciences › Health Professions › General Health Professions › Health Literacy and Information Accessibility
  • Health Sciences › Health Professions › General Health Professions › Mobile Health and mHealth Applications
  • Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Artificial Intelligence › Text Readability and Simplification
Keywords
health literacy, mobile health apps, medical documents, medical terminology comprehension, user satisfaction, chronic disease management

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